SO I’m strolling near the corner of Warwick Way in Pimlico, minding my own business, when who bounds out of a shop and almost runs into me but former Tory grandee Michael Fallon, besuited, maskless and wearing a satisfied grin.
And who can blame him? The former defence minister bailed out before last December’s election and went into the oil business, thereby avoiding any association with the Johnson government’s coronavirus car crash.
Sir Michael lost his minister’s hat in 2017 after being accused of “repeatedly and inappropriately” touching journalist Julia Hartley Brewer’s knee under the dinner table 15 years earlier. No comment.
His more serious crime though was to be a Remoaner, albeit a reluctant one. And, with a swivel-eyed Brexiter Tory victory looming, he sensibly decided to call it a day.
Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes. Pimlico.
You’re always in danger of running into a politico, ex or extant, in Pimlico because Parliament is only a 10 minute trot away. Estate agents punt flats in the neighbourhood as pieds-à-terre for MPs on the basis that it’s within range of Parliament’s division bell. If they get their skates on, they can just make it to the voting lobby.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Pimlico – my grandfather had a fish shop in Tachbrook Street long before my time – although I don’t have much occasion to go there these days. It has generally been regarded as a bit of an enclave, more famous for what it’s near than for what it is.
There is nearby Westminster, of course, and Victoria Station and the fast train to Brighton at its northern edge, while a quarter hour stroll gets you to Buckingham Palace.
Even in the gloomy fifties it had a certain cosmopolitan charm, stirring seductive thoughts of a then distant Europe and all that exotic foreign stuff like café au lait and spaghetti and flamenco.
That image was perhaps in part a hangover from the 1949 Ealing comedy “Passport to Pimlico” in which the fictional rationbook-era locals discover an ancient charter proving they’re actually part of the Duchy of Burgundy.
In the film, a Pimlico woman shouts from her window: “We’ll always be English and that’s why we’re sticking up for our right to be Burgundian.” It sounds like a pro-EU slogan avant la lettre.
The district was mainly marshland and market gardens until the 1820s when Thomas Cubitt was hired to develop the area with handsome stucco terraces and squares. For most of the 19th century it was home to the “better sort”, middle class families and aspirant tradespeople.
By the middle of the 20th, however, it had gone downhill somewhat and became a convenient spot for the peers and plutocrats of the more affluent Belgravia and Mayfair to park their live-out servants.
I had an aunt who was what in those days was called a lady’s maid. She ministered to the needs of the wife of a captain of industry known to everyone as “the Colonel”.
As part of her wages she was given a rent-free floor in Pimlico’s elegant St George’s Square, the only square in London that is bordered by the river. These days the flat would fetch somewhere north of a million.
Her generous employers took my aunt and uncle to Monaco in 1956 for the wedding of Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly. Well, someone had to be on hand to iron the colonel’s wife’s frock.
I would often spend the weekend at St George’s Square and sometimes hung out with the family of “Uncle” Ernie the bookmaker who had a basement flat in Pimlico’s more proletarian Denbigh Street.
In the era before betting shops, gambling was a semi-clandestine world of bookies’ runners and betting slips passed in pubs. A visitor at Ernie’s once took us kids out to the yard to discreetly show off the handgun he was packing.
The neighbourhood has gone back upmarket in recent years. But the small shops and food stalls have survived and, like much of central London, it’s now more cosmopolitan than ever. The Pimlico Academy even offers flamenco classes.
Strolling homewards through Parliament Square, I spotted that anti-Brexit campaigner with the bowler hat who’s been hanging out there for the past four years. He and a line of bored looking police were preparing for the latest demo.
Someone had strung a banner on the railings of Parliament. “Self-serving idiots are destroying our nation,” it read. I couldn’t help thinking: “You’re well out of it, Michael Fallon.”
Idle Thoughts on London Walks 